Mina Rhodes (Cvalda)

Easily one of--if not THE--best horror anthology film to

Tragedy has struck: Almodovar's peerless winning streak has ended.

Broken Embraces is a mess of a film. It plays like a series of sketches--some brilliant, others seriously miscalculated--that never fully congeal into a film that works. When Almodovar centers his scenes around his muse, Penelope Cruz, the old magic the director is famous for sparks to life. When she disappears, often for long stretches of screentime, the film flounders. Too many characters, and too little development amid all the overcooked telenovelas melodrama to make us care about their dramatic revelations. A major disappointment from one of the best filmmakers working today.

David Lynch's masterpiece (out of several masterpieces), Mulholland Dr. is staggeringly brilliant in its execution. Volumes have already been written on the film, and a small but growing minority of film critics share my view that it is the greatest film ever made. Mulholland Dr is the art form at its most perfect--indeed, the film, in terms of story, can only exist as what it is: a film. Written as a novel, for example, it would be impossible to convey the images and dream-like plotline that Lynch brings to the screen. Mulholland Dr is, for it's first two thirds, a dream (and everyone knows dreams in written fiction are usually beyond tacky), and one of the myriad pleasures of the film is watching how Diane's dream is influenced by her wretched waking life (seen in the last third of the film): the way she lifts names for dream characters off name tags, incorporates individuals randomly glimpsed, twists events and interactions into her favor. The dream section of the film is not just a glib representation of Diane's wish-fulfillment, however; the looming tragedy of the film's climax grows stronger as the dream persists, and the audience feels growing sympathy for poor Diane, whose emotional and mental turmoil is glimpsed in symbolism that is--for once in a film!--not simply representative of cliched Freudian or Jungian archetypes. In many ways, it is Lynch's most humanistic film, and introduces the theme that would dominate Lynch's next (also brilliant) picture as well: the way Hollywood uses and destroys women. Added to all this are the usual Lynch gags, which for once showcase his sense of humor without coming across as masturbatory (Wild at Heart, ahem). Composer Angelo Badalementi's cameo appearance as a supremely picky espresso drinker easily wins top prize as the funniest moment in any Lynch film, and his score itself is among his best. It seems the thing that throws most people off about Mulholland Dr. is its plotline. This is a result of people going in and expecting to work through it intellectually, which is not how the film should be viewed. Dreams themselves are never intellectual--they are driven by emotions and anxieties from the subconscious, and to truly grasp the film, one needs to feel their way through instead of think (the exact opposite of my "grand" life philosophy, but there are always exceptions to the rule).

Tsukamoto's best film. A masterpiece.